I think it will. The Rose Bowl will most likely prefer a 10-2 UWa team to a 9-4 Utah team, and especially considering the fact that UWa will be the higher ranked team. And seeing as how both Utah and UWa (and Ore) tied with 7-2 conference record, there really won’t be any demands that the bowl selection committee will need to justify that decision.
I predict that if Utah loses, (1) USC goes to the CFP, (2) UWa goes to the Rose, and (3) Ore goes to the Alamo. The Holiday will choose either Utah or UCLA, and the Las Vegas will get who the Holiday passes on.
The Holiday has traditionally shown a preference for inviting “California” teams ahead of the non-CA programs in this league, but there might be some bad blood lingering from last year, when UCLA backed out of the Holiday Bowl on way too short of notice for the bowl organizers to find a replacement, so they lost a ton of money on that deal.
Between Utah and UCLA, Utah will have posted the better conference record, but UCLA beat us head-to-head. So this could go either way. Best we make it easier on the bowl committees by beating USC Friday night, and return to the Rose Bowl on Jan. 2nd.